THE CONVENING

The story behind this video…

In 2023, the Surge Institute—a national racial equity nonprofit dedicated to transforming the education space to better serve our youth and communities—held its third national alumni convening in New Orleans, LA. The Convening was designed as a space for Surge program alumni to come together to learn from one another as well as foster a sense of community and connection in order to better operate as a collective of change agents across America.

The event was thoughtfully constructed and incredibly robust, with lots of layers. Surge alums led breakout sessions and keynote presentations. Local New Orleans leaders took part in an informative and moving panel discussion. Awards were given out to alums, funders, and leaders in the Surge community. Actress and author Amanda Seales was a special guest speaker for the event.

the challenge

StoryPaced was tasked with photography and video production for this three-day conference with the knowledge that it would be a key piece Surge would use to acquire future funding and support for their deeply important national racial equity and education work. Among the more specific objectives were:

• Capturing clean video and audio of several key activities

• Performing video interviews of attendees, the event organizer, and Ms. Seales.

• Shooting great candid photography of all key activities as well as several group photos that included all attendees.

• Taking up to 50 headshots of attendees and Surge Staff members throughout the Convening.

• Cutting together an accurate and moving event video for future funding purposes.

The event involved more than 200 attendees, dozens of speakers, multiple locations, and uncertain availability for our interviewees.

the plan

At StoryPaced we assigned a small team, who worked closely with Surge to continuously understand the cadence of activities and monitor any changes to the agenda. We provided a coverage plan and worked with the Surge marketing team to refine our coverage plan to best align with the event schedule. StoryPaced also wrote the interview questions based on the desired outcomes Surge had regarding using the video to raise funds for their work.

For onsite production, we assigned three roles:

Producer/Lead Videographer - StoryPaced Founder Chris Paicely served in this role, building the coverage plan and assigning the support team members to specific spaces to accomplish the videography and photography needs. Chris also served as liaison to the onsite audio-visual team, the Surge marketing team, and the event organizer.

Support Videographer - Filmmaker Miles August served in this role, capturing the b-roll throughout the event, and managing camera operation and lighting set-up on the onsite video interviews.

Lead Photographer - Photographer Jeremy Beal served in this role, capturing all onsite photos and headshots for the event.

Operating across these three roles, with direction from Chris, the StoryPaced team was able to meet all of Surge’s onsite needs. When interviewees were unavailable, StoryPaced was able to quickly adjust and secure new interviewees that fit Surge’s need for diverse storytelling about the event. By the end of the event, the Surge team expressed happiness with the way the StoryPaced team navigated the event, interacting positively with the attendees to create genuine comfort while also working hard to ensure every key moment was captured well.

the story

Chris served as editor on the project, taking all of the footage from the three days and designing a video piece that powerfully captured the Convening experience. In pooling the footage together Chris recognized a common thread among all of the interviewees and much of the footage: family. The event did not feel like a traditional conference experience and that needed to come across in this video. The words “Euphoric” and “Family Table” aren’t said about most conferences. This was special and it needed to be seen as such.

The first draft of the video recap of the Convening was well received. The Surge team had very few edits and Carmita Semaan, the founder of Surge said the following about the final video:

“I cried such big ugly tears the first time I watched it! It captures everything about the heart of this movement! Bravo, Chris Paicely!”

the learnings

For Surge, video storytelling has been an ongoing experiment in how to best articulate an intangible quality the organization has that goes beyond leadership acceleration or professional development. As the organization approaches a decade of continuous impact in the education space, seeing the events Surge creates as just events, would be a massive miscalculation of what it means to exist inside of a Surge Space., therefore as a video production provider, StoryPaced has the unique job of going to Surge with the understanding that an “event recap video” is anything but.

In reality, producing a video piece about a Surge event is the encapsulation of a vibe. It is preserving a moment and allowing a quiet pause for the viewer to be emersed in something warm and familial.

Since the Convening, StoryPaced has produced several more Surge video pieces, each working to distill a bit of that warmth about the Surge experience. It continues to be a joy learning from and building upon the Surge story.

Tapping into something familial.